Accenture partners with SA Rugby

05 Dec 2018

SA Rugby unveiled on Tuesday how Accenture South Africa will champion the federation's digital acceleration ambitions as the proud official digital partner to the South African Rugby Union and the Springboks.

“To many South Africans, rugby is more than just a game. It's a sport that evokes powerful emotions and has the power to unite the nation,” said Vukani Mngxati, Chief Executive Officer for Accenture Africa.

“We believe that our association with SA Rugby and the Springbok brand is the ideal platform to celebrate the country's diversity and entrench the company's place in the fabric of popular South African culture.”

SA Rugby has identified digitisation as a key enabler of the organisation’s strategic aspirations and selected Accenture as its preferred partner.

“We want to become a fan-centric organisation, with the ability to engage directly with loyal Springbok supporters via the various digital channels that modern consumers now use to interact with their passions,” said SA Rugby CEO, Jurie Roux.

“SA Rugby chose to partner with Accenture South Africa because of the company's established position as South Africa’s leading digital services provider and its market expertise in digital acceleration.

“Accenture South Africa brings a distinctive blend of local experience and talent coupled with a global track record in fan engagement across all capabilities and platforms in the new digital world,” added Roux.

Globally, Accenture has successfully revolutionised fan engagement and crafted memorable digital experiences for the Australian Rugby Union and the RBS 6 Nations, as hyper-connected fans around the world increasingly demand access to rich and cross-platform content in real-time, whether they're watching at home or in the stadium.

“Accenture South Africa will now fundamentally change the way SA Rugby engages and interacts with local rugby fans to deliver on the organisation’s digital strategy and ensure that it is positioned at the forefront of the sporting arena in the country,” explained Wayne Hull, Managing Director at Accenture Digital Africa and Accenture’s Executive lead for the partnership.

Based on Accenture's analysis of SA Rugby’s existing digital capabilities, the federation needed to refresh its existing digital capabilities.

“According to our research, 75 percent of people judge the credibility of a brand from their web and mobile platform, while 38 percent stop browsing if the platform is unattractive. Mobile users are also five times more likely to abandon a task if a web platform isn’t optimised for mobile,” added Hull.

A responsive platform design that enables mobile-friendly engagement is therefore a non-negotiable in today's mobile-first digital environment. As such, Accenture will invest substantially to re-imagine, build and deliver a world-class, modern, mobile-friendly digital platform that creates a fun, immersive and engaging digital experience for fans.

Once implemented, the digital platform will create opportunities for SA Rugby to hyper-personalise fan engagements.

“With the ability to deliver personalised content for all types of fans, SA Rugby will place hyper-relevance at the core of its fan experience and engagement strategy. This new digital platform will also enable SA Rugby to scale its active engagement fan base tenfold,” said Hull.

Fans will enjoy real-time access to interesting team and player insights, in addition to stats, data and exclusive content that can enrich the fan and game-viewing experiences.

“We are excited by the power of digital to bolster our personalised fan engagement capabilities and create a digitally connected, loyal, passionate and engaged fan base that will now be able to support and love our teams and competitions in previously unimagined ways,” said Roux.

The new digital engagement platforms will go live in time for the start of the new season.